<p>I'm going to one of my state schools this fall. I'm a prelaw and hope to do well enough with grades and the LSAT to get into a T14. After researching majors that seem to help with the LSAT, I decided on International Relations. I like the diversified curriculum as well as the study abroad and language aspect (I hope for a job in the government eventually). My school offers International Studies not relations. Is there much of a difference between the two?
Basically, is there a significant enough difference between relations and studies where a law school may favor the former if I ended up as a borderline candidate? Thanks!</p>
<p>International Relations is a subfield of Political Science, it is highly theoretical so besides taking standard political science courses, you’d taking courses on realism, liberalism, constructionism, and a variety of other theories. International Studies is an interdisciplinary major composed of History, Political Science, Language, Economics, and possibly depending on the concentration sociology, anthropology, or environmental engineering. Both are fine for law school but it just depends what are you interested in. IR is very theory heavy so if you like broad conceptual stuff go for it. International Studies is like a buffet, you can pick and choose within the degree what to focus on.</p>
<p>Won’t matter at all. Consider majoring in something that will make you employable in case you decide not to do the law school thing or you don’t get into a law school worth going to at a reasonable price.</p>
<p>Also, I wouldn’t pick a major based on what those charts for LSAT scores by major say. A lot of the differences have to deal with self selection and are pretty misleading. As an example, I’m pretty sure “government” is fairly high on that list, and poli sci is much lower, even though they are the same thing. The difference is that certain schools (Harvard, UT-Austin, among others) call political science government. Just something to consider.</p>
<p>The LSAT is also completely learnable, so I wouldn’t base my major choice upon what skewed statistics say will get you a higher score.</p>
<p>You should do IS, you can do more interesting stuff with it in my opinion. Here is a list of things you can do from my university’s website: [International</a> Studies - SVSU](<a href=“http://www.svsu.edu/aac/notinmenu/information/internationalstudies/]International”>http://www.svsu.edu/aac/notinmenu/information/internationalstudies/)</p>